Out of His Hands
by Mystic83
Summary: When he finally slows down, realization will hit him like a brick wall. KaraLee


The cell door slammed shut rather violently behind him, and Lee Adama turned in time to see the deliberate sneers on the Marine escorts' faces. They were just loving the fact that they finally had a chance to taunt the untouchable son of Galactica's Commander. He didn't have the strength to fight back, which probably only made it that much sweeter for them.

Things were just moving too fast for him. It seemed like in a blink of an eye his whole world had turned upside down.

His best friend had committed mutiny and jumped back to the planet they had called home. He had followed his heart for once and defied everything he had ever known to stand up for what he held to be right. That little choice ended up with the woman he had risked it all to save thrown into the brig right beside him. Worst of all was the fact that both of these actions had caused the one man he had ever looked up to in his whole life to be shot point blank by a Cylon agent without anyone being in a position to save him.

His father's life had hung in the balance for days now. The gunshots had been positioned precisely where they needed to be in order to do the most damage. The Galactica was not equipped for the level of emergency this was, so it took a while to get the right supplies from the medical ship.

But he was there the whole time they were waiting for them.

Lee couldn't even begin to let Colonel Tigh know how much it meant to him that he had been allowed to stay at his father's bedside until William Adama had stabilized. He was a criminal of the state, and he had been given the courtesy of finding out if he was all alone in this world or if there was still one person out there that he could care about.

Granted the second the doctor had decreed his father had stabilized and would live, Tigh had him whisked down the two flights of stairs and through three or four crowded hallways to the brig. Cell door slamming shut as soon as he set foot over the edge. They had been eager to put him in his place.

He wasn't going to complain. That little bit of consideration was more than he had earned.

He was a traitor. He had gone against everything he had been trained.

"How are you holding up, Captain Apollo?"

He heard her voice before he really registered that she was standing in the cell next to his, staring at him intently. "All things considered, Madam President," he mumbled, taking a seat on the bed.

He hadn't sat down for hours. Pacing had calmed his nerves since he was little, and he seemed to have reverted back to that behavior during his time in sick bay. It felt good to relieve at least a little bit of the tension in his muscles.

"How is the Commander doing?"

Lee felt himself jump slightly as her hand reached through the bars and rested lightly on his shoulder. He didn't realize at first that she was waiting for an answer. "He's going to live. Though I'm still not sure why you care to ask considering your current position."

He felt her hand stiffen and knew his words had hurt her in some way. It didn't surprise him. He had meant them to sting a little, which was why it was no surprise when she started to argue. "I don't know what that comment is supposed to mean, but I assure you, Captain, that I do not want your father to die. He means a lot to the Fleet."

He finally turned to look her in the eye as he shrugged away from her touch. "A lot more than you do apparently."

His look of pure hatred was what kept her from saying something in response, and he was able to continue, "Unlike my father, you will, in all likelihood, be restored to power within days. The Fleet cannot lose both of its leaders in so short of a time span. Colonel Tigh will realize that he needs you in order to keep us moving towards Earth. My father does not have that luxury of a guaranteed future. You couldn't afford him that luxury, Madam President."

"I do not see where this is coming from or where you intend it to go."

Lee shook his head. He didn't want to be talking with her right now. It hurt too much to stare into the face of the woman who had caused him to make the worst decision of his life. Plus, he wasn't thinking straight nor could he really understand who he could trust at the moment. Rationally, he knew that he was partially blaming her for something she had no control over. She did not ask him to try to save her. She did not force him to pull that gun. It still didn't make the accusation disappear from his words, though.

"I don't know what I'm trying to say either. I'm tired, and my father has just barely survived an assassination attempt. So, please can we not do this right now?" He sent her a look that he knew she wouldn't be able to read. He wanted her to be confused. "I'm not up to putting on my Perfect Soldier Apollo face right now. Besides, you shouldn't be seen talking to me. I'm a traitor. Your image might be tarnished if you show me any mercy. Seeing as how you're Galactica's sole leader, you need your image."

He could see that she was taken aback by his sudden mood shifts. She had been stuck either on Colonial One or in the brig the whole time the events of the past few days have unfolded. They hadn't had much contact. So she wouldn't be used to the mood swings he had been subject to since Starbuck left the Fleet.

_Starbuck._

He could practically feel the anger well up inside of him when her face surfaced in his mind. It fluctuated between the Kara he had known all those years ago during training to the Kara who had greeted him all smiles and beautifulness up on Cloud Nine to the Kara who had joked with him those first few days he was CAG because no other pilot would speak to him to the Kara who had sent him a look of hatred before launching her fist at his jaw in the hanger bay days before. In his mind, they were all the same. They were all masks she hid behind.

He would know. He had the same masks.

He no longer understood what was real.

Kara had screwed up a lot of things by leaving without explaining to him why she had felt it necessary to go. Maybe if she had tried to explain it to him, he would have understood. Maybe he would be able to imagine what went through her head when she decided to leave him behind.

He knew this was the easy way out of a hard situation, but he couldn't help but blame her and her impulsive decisions for all that had gone wrong in his life. Everything seemed to be centered around her. It had for years.

There was a faint shuffle next to him, and he guessed the President had understood that he wasn't going to talk with her again any time soon. She had gone back to whatever she had been doing before they brought him in.

Good. It would make it easier on him if he didn't have to hide his pain from anyone else.

Because that was what he had been doing for days now. Hiding away the pain that seeing his best friend screw up her life for the hundredth time had caused inside of him. Usually he could fix her mistakes. It was his unofficial job to get her back on track. This time he could not.

It was out of his hands.

More than that, she was out of his life.

The words made him shiver slightly. He didn't know whether he should laugh at the absurdity of it or cry over losing the one person who really understood him.

Stretching, he lay down on the bunk and faced the wall. It was easier to let things go when he didn't have to have people's eyes on him. The Fleet had just been staring at him since his father was shot, waiting for him to make another mistake. He wasn't going to.

He had made enough mistakes to last a lifetime. And there was no way to fix them.

__

She's not coming back.

Those words kept ringing through his head. She was not coming back to the Galactica, and there was nothing he could do. When he had seen her Raider power up its FTL drive and jump out of the system, the strangest feelings had run through him. He had been scared by what he had thought in those few milliseconds that it took to realize what she had done.

A weight had been lifted off his shoulders as he realized she was no longer his responsibility. She had been exactly that for so long that he couldn't really imagine what it would be like to not constantly worry that she was wasting her life or wasting her talent. They had been watching each other's back for so long that it was almost second nature. Now, she had gone out on her own to somewhere he couldn't follow. Somewhere he couldn't be to watch over her.

At the same time that weight was leaving his body, he felt like taking his Viper and making a blind jump to god knows where in hopes that somehow he would end up where she was going. Maybe he could find understanding there. Maybe being by her side could keep her safe. That was usually what worked for them.

If they stayed side by side, they could make it out of anything alive.

The jump was suicide, plain and simple, but it was his gut feeling that he should go. He wanted to follow her. He wanted that responsibility.

He had spent years repressing his gut, trying to keep his temper and split-decisions in check. Ever since she had pointed out that they were his only weakness, they were the only things holding him back from achieving perfection in the air and on the ground, he had done his best to keep them under control. He didn't want to be held back.

Ironically, that was the only thing that had kept him from rushing after her. He kept himself in control and just stared at the empty space she had once occupied.

Again, the severity of what had happened to Kara rang through his head. The same thought had rung through his head as he sat in that Viper pilot. It was still ringing inside him.

__

She is gone. She is gone. She is gone.

He had faltered in his decision of whether or not to follow her Raider, and now he was never going to see her again. He was never going to be able to apologize for screaming at her. For bringing up that horrible time when she had gotten involved with that Major during Academy. For not being able to confide in her about why he was really so upset with her choice of lovers. For not thanking her for risking everything she had built in the past two years to give him back his father. For forgetting how hard it could be to live in this world alone.

The list went on and on.

However, he knew although those were all reasons why he could feel himself slowly shutting down inside, they were not the sole reason he found himself giving up the fight to stay alive in this post-Holocaust existence. They were not what made him realize that waking up in the morning was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

Not being able to see that smile on Kara's face anymore. The one that mocked him and made him laugh at the same time. The one that made him want to punch her in the jaw and pull her into his arms. The one the infuriated him and impassioned him.

Losing that was killing him inside, slowly but surely. And he had no way to stop it. Not if she wouldn't come back to him. Not if that smile wouldn't come back.

Her smile had kept him going through so many hard times. Knowing that no matter what, it was there for him to see. She was there for him to see.

To think for two years, he had taken her presence in his life for granted. He had taken the fact that he could get a pass for military leave to go see that smile, to hear her voice, to argue with that hotheaded pilot who thought she knew it all. He could do that, but he had chosen not to.

During all those opportunities, he hadn't gone. He hadn't wanted to deal with the pain and awkwardness that seeing her again would cause. He was weak, and he had wasted his chance.

He should have used his time wisely to admit to her how much she meant to him. He should have told her the truth when she looked at him across the hanger bay and apologized for screwing up once again. He should have explained that it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before in other pilots and that he was wrong to scream at her in front of the deck crew. He should have told her that he held her up to a different standard because she was better than those other pilots.

He should have told her how large a role she played in his life. How she kept him moving, kept him living.

__

She means everything to you.

His mind flashed back to years before. It was still the same. When it came to her, it was always the same.

He had to do the polite thing. He had to do what was appropriate. What was expected. That was what made him sturdy, stable Captain Apollo.

He had chosen to do only what was appropriate, what was expected of him, since the outburst he had with his father at the funeral.

The look on Kara's face that day as his screaming ruined any hope she had of putting Zak to rest in peace would weigh on his mind for the rest of his life. He had killed her last bit of hope. That last little inclination that maybe she would be able to move past the tragedy to go on with her life.

The least he could do was not be a constant physical reminder of what she could have had if his brother had lived and what he had taken away from her.

It would hurt her too much to have him there regularly. It was for the best that he disappear. The gentlemanly thing to do.

All such stupid, superficial reasons that had made so much sense at the time. All the excuses to stay away from her and from the Galactica. They had made sense for two whole years until he was forced to see her again by his superiors. Until there was just no way to avoid it.

He didn't think he'd ever be willing to admit the little jump of excitement he felt when he realized that he was going to see her again.

There wasn't much time to think it over. He got the command from his Commander and was given the next Viper scheduled to launch. And then he was there, staring through the bars at the woman he had thought about constantly for as long as he could remember.

He had been so damn cavalier at the time. So arrogant and casual when he saw her that day in Galactica's brig.

He didn't have to jump right into an apology. He didn't have to tell her the whole truth at the first opportunity. There was time to repair the damage that had been done. There was always time.

Time no longer mattered. Why would it if she was never going to come back to hear what he had to say? What he had been meaning to say for a long time?

His understanding of what she meant to him had changed so slowly during those two years that he hadn't even noticed it until that day he had returned from the dead to help her out from underneath her Viper. As soon as his briefing was over, he had run to the brig to find her. To let her know that maybe he wasn't just a commander's son given a chance to fly because of daddy. That he had the talent she had always told him was there. That he had been on his own and he had still managed to come up with a way to stay alive when he was at death's doorstep.

She hadn't been in the brig so he started with the bunkroom and began systematically searching the whole ship for her. It didn't occur to him that there were other people who would want to know he was alive. All that mattered in his head was letting her know.

He found her in the hanger bay under a Viper, covered in engine grease and sweat. And yet he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as her.

It was the smile again. It was always the smile.

She had shivered when she took his hand, and he had finally admitted it to himself.

He had loved her since the moment she showed up in his life.

It was something he had always known but had never dwelled on. He couldn't. There was no easy way to explain to your best friend that you don't think they should be engaged to your little brother because you want them for yourself. Not when you loved Zak so much and knew that he could make Kara happy. The evidence was in front of your face every day. So you sit back and do the expected thing. You stay silent.

Then, the problem changed with the death of his little brother. It would have been inappropriate to try to explain to the fiancée of your deceased brother that you loved her and wanted to keep her safe now that he could not. There was no good moment to admit something like that. She was in mourning. She was in pain.

And she stayed in mourning for so damn long, letting his death rule over her every move. There had never been a moment when he knew for sure that she would not laugh in his face if he confided his feelings to her. If he told her he loved her. He couldn't do that when she was so hurt. She wouldn't understand how serious he was being. It would have seemed like some crazy, cruel joke.

So he had stayed away. For her good and for his own. Until the day that the military shoved her back into his life.

Seeing her smile at him in that special way that Kara had always had was all he needed to confirm that nothing had changed. He still loved her. And he was still waiting for that perfect moment.

It seemed to come at just the right moment. They were dancing at the reception for the election of a new Vice President. She was wearing a dress she had gotten from somewhere that he had no clue of. In the back of his head, he knew that she had done it because of what he had said. He had only meant his comment as a tease, never to really be brought up again.

And then she had to do something crazy like look so frakkin' beautiful that he had to do everything in his power not to break out into a massive grin.

She had done it for him.

Moments after he found her, they had been swaying to the sounds of the music, and she had leaned in to lay her head on his shoulder. It was an intimate gesture that hadn't escaped him.

She was comfortable with him. She let her guard down with him when she kept it up for every other person. That meant something.

When he felt her shiver against him, the words had been forming at the tip of his tongue. He was going to tell her.

And then Gaius Baltar cut in.

He had been taken by surprise. That was why he didn't object to the intrusion. That was why he had just let her slip through his fingers. That was why he missed the pleading look on her face, telling him to stay. That was why he didn't fight for her.

It wasn't because he was scared of what she would say when he told her he loved her. It wasn't because he was scared of the possibility that she might feel the same.

No, it couldn't have been because of that.

Self-denial was incredibly easy and helped him from destructing completely. It had kept him running on empty for days. Denial of the fact that he was not the strong person that everyone thought. Denial that he hadn't been scared of her reaction to his declaration of love. Denial that he feared the legendary Starbuck whose bark was worse than her bite most of the time. Denial that he might actually have been able to find happiness after the world as he knew it had ended.

But the time for denial was slowly running out.

All that was left was the cold, hard truth.

He had had his opportunity to let her know, and he had failed. Now he didn't have another chance.

He couldn't tell a woman who wasn't there how much she meant to him.

That damned indecision was the reason why she had taken the Raider to Caprica. If he had told her how he felt, if he had insisted Baltar wait until he was through dancing with her, if he had just been a little braver…

If. If. If.

If only she was alive.

If only she was sitting beside him in the brig. The two mutineers together again, bantering and laughing in the worst of situations.

If only she knew that he had understood what she was trying to tell him all those times they had screaming matches or exchanged blows throughout the years. That her words had sunk in and made a difference. He had made a decision finally. He had taken a stand for something. He had let his emotions rule his actions without his temper taking over.

Only it hadn't been the right stand to take in the end. He had been handcuffed and labeled an enemy of the Fleet. He had unintentionally kept himself from having the opportunity to save his father from being shot by Boomer.

No. By that Cylon. She wasn't Sharon Valerii anymore.

She was a machine.

And she was just as much a traitor as he was.

His decision to fight for the Presidency had dealt humanity a potentially deadly blow. He couldn't take that back. Nor could he ignore how his decision might have come from the fact that he had already lost the most influential woman in his life. He didn't want to lose another.

It had taken losing Kara for him to realize something. He had been walking around in a haze that past few days until it had finally sunk in. The lesson he had been trying to learn suddenly cleared all the cloudiness in his brain.

Their world wasn't going to wait around for him to feel comfortable. It wasn't going to let him take his time in deciding whether he was brave enough to tell her. No one was waiting for him to prove that he was good enough to deserve her love.

Because love doesn't wait for you to be in control. The perfect moment may never come. So you just have to chose one random moment and hope for the best. You have to put your faith in the unknown and just leap.

He hadn't had the right amount of faith in her until she was gone.

It was too late. He had blown the one chance he had at telling her. He had done his part to set the horrible events of the past few days into action. He had driven her to doubt, driven her to think of herself as a screw-up. He had pounded on her and pounded on her until she had nothing left. She thought she had nothing to stay for. He had made sure of that.

It had taken him until now to understand what he had done.

True, all of this could have been stopped if she hadn't taken that Raider to Caprica. If she had stayed here with the crew of Galactica, there would have been no activation of a Cylon sleeper agent, no shooting of the Commander, no conflict between the military and the presidency, no need for him to take a stand for the wrong reasons.

In that regard, it should be all her fault. A lot of the people left on this world who knew the truth of their dire situation did blame her. They knew as long as Starbuck was still on Galactica, there had been a chance to stop the events from unfolding as they did. When she was around, miracles tended to happen.

But he knew something that they did not.

This had nothing to do with anything Kara had decided or anything Kara had done.

This was all his fault.

He had driven her to leave. He had pushed and pushed until there was no other option.

When it got down to it, he had set this chain of events in motion years earlier when he pushed her out of his life. She had found her way back into it again, and for that, he was grateful. It had given him a reason to keep fighting. But then she slipped away again. She had been within his grasp, a fingertip's reach away, and he had let her slip through.

And now he couldn't get her back. There was no way to get her back.

There would be no sudden reconciliation. No reunion.

The woman he loved, the woman he lived for, the woman he was willing to die for… she was gone.

And he only had himself to blame.

He had been right. He was the reason that this had all happened.

He rested his head against the cool concrete wall and prayed to gods he had not spoken to in two years. He prayed that they would keep his father safe. That the Fleet would be restored. That they would be able to rescue the Vice President and the others from Kobol. That they would be able to make it to somewhere that the Cylons could not find them.

But most he prayed for her.

He prayed that the gods would give him Kara back.

Because he wasn't sure if he could live without her anymore.

So he shut his eyes and prayed.


End file.
